Erika's screen cleared and she looked around for the first time in the new zone. A message popped up, notifying her that she'd received some minuscule amount of XP for discovering a new area of the game, Fixxa's Pride.

She noticed two things as she looked around--there were no other players, and everything in the zone was HUGE. They were standing outside the "inn", which was just a couple of strange looking beds. She walked in a circle around them, finally putting the pieces together.

>ERIKONE: Are these beds just...piles of sawdust?

>DECKBOX: you're so clever. it took me like ten minutes to figure it out. yeah, we're small in this zone. look west.

Erika did so, walking slowly toward a cliff.

>DECKBOX: don't fall off.

She glanced over the edge of the wooden cliff and saw a monster bigger than anything she'd ever seen in the game. Once it got close enough to target, she grinned. Just as she had suspected, the monster was FIXXA THE FIXXER.

>ERIKONE: So we're in this zone, but we're still max level. Can we fight her?

>DECKBOX: tbh i don't think we're supposed to.

>DOTTTT: Yeah, to get into this we had to go to the goblin city and agree to test their new Shrink Ray. If killing Fixxa were the end goal of this I don't feel like that would have been the quest. Let me share it real quick, actually.

>DOTTTT would like to share the level 100 quest "Unsafe Working Conditions".

Erika accepted and read through the quest description.

Thanks for agreeing to help me out! We've lost contact with Fixxa since she went back to Neo Phyte to work on a project for Boss. She delivered the two machines, but she's still in the workshop. She's set up some protective spell so none of us goblins can get into her workshop. We think she's restricted it to people she can easily beat up if it comes to it. So, no goblins, because we're the best fighters on the planet. We're going to send her a box of supplies with some stowaways inside. We need you to find out what she's working on now and report back. If you can steal her blueprints that would be best. Talk to me again when you're ready to hop in the box.

>ERIKONE: So we got shrunk and now we're infiltrating to find the blueprints? And then, ostensibly, we'll be able to get the killswitch password?

>DOTTTT: That's my guess. I don't know what the next quest in the chain is but I'm assuming it'll take down the door level requirement for us, we can do the fight as intended, and then we can go back to the actual raid and take down the mini-boss. And then, who knows.

>DECKBOX: we've been messaging fred but he's on /dnd. not sure what to do. i dont want him to keep losing levels on his alt if thats not the way we're supposed to solve it.

>ERIKONE: True. Okay, well, somebody keep trying to ping him and when we get a hold of him we'll keep him in the loop. Until then, let's find these blueprints!

Erika uncapped her thermos, the hot steam from her coffee leaping out and fogging her glasses. She rolled her eyes and waited for it to clear before taking another sip.

If they had needed any more confirmation that they should stay at level 100, a band of monsters finally patrolled around the corner and walked toward them--two massive soldier ants and an enormous beetle.

>DECKBOX: uh oh

>DECKBOX: gonna have aggro shortly. we fighting, boss?

>ERIKONE: Maybe they've got blueprints on them. Buff us up, Dot.

>DOTTTT: Yep.

The monsters charged at Erika as she taunted, switching to self-healing once they weren't at risk of attacking the DPS. With Fred missing, they struggled to quickly dispatch the monsters. But they eventually went down and Erika looted them to no avail.

>ERIKONE: Nothing. Guess mechanical wunderkind Fixxa didn't keep her blueprints on the ants in her shop. Let's keep looking. Nothing from Fred?

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

>DECKBOX: nada

>ERIKONE: Alright. Let's keep moving.

They continued walking along the workbench, making their way up a pile of tools and onto Fixxa's desk. Everything about the area absolutely delighted Erika, and she couldn't wait to come back and explore further once they weren't in the middle of trying to get a world first.

>ERIKONE: She makes me nervous. How big is her aggro radius?

>DOTTTT: It's real big. Like, I don't think we can get to the other half of the desk without getting into combat with her.

>ERIKONE: Okay. Let me drop party and I'll aggro her. I'll blow whatever cooldowns i can to stay alive and keep her on the other side of the room while you guys search through here.

>DECKBOX: worth a shot.

>ERIKONE has left the party.

Erika /waved to the party as she sprinted to the other side of the desk. Just as Dot had predicted, she had barely made it ten meters (by her scale) before Fixxa turned and charged.

>FIXXA THE FIXXER: Hahahahahahaha! You're so SMALL! I thought once I stopped eating sweets in here the bugs would be gone! One more to squash!

Erika leapt from the edge of the desk, pulling the giant Fixxa into a corner of the room. Before she hit the ground, she activated her defensive cooldowns, negating most of the damage. She kept one eye on the combat log, noting that if she hadn't mitigated the attacks any one of them would have killed her. Out of curiosity, she attempted to melee Fixxa and dealt exactly 0 damage.

>FIXXA THE FIXXER SQUASH-RIGHT FOOT hit ERIKONE for (43029 shielded) 2041 damage.

>FIXXA THE FIXXER SQUASH-LEFT FOOT hit ERIKONE for (40152 shielded) 2131 damage.

Erika was blocking 95% of the damage but her HP was still evaporating. Down to 10% HP, she slammed her emergency macro.

>ERIKONE ASCENSION hit FIXXA THE FIXXER for 0 damage.

>FIXXA THE FIXXER MELEE hit ERIKONE for (43328 shielded) 0 damage.

Erika couldn't attack with Ascension active, but she wouldn't take any damage. For another... ten seconds, anyway. She sprinted away, hoping to keep Fixxa's damage down until her friends got through the desk.

As Ascension faded, a party invite popped up on Erika's screen. She quickly accepted, rejoining the party. With additional members in the party, the fight stopped and Fixxa despawned, quickly reappearing in the center of the room. Erika did her best to quickly return to the part of the room where they'd zoned in. She let out a breath she didn't remember holding.

>ERIKONE: Alright. What's up?

>DOTTTT: We got the blueprints. Let's port back to goblin town and we'll turn this quest in.

They took a portal back to where they'd been given the quest and Erika burst out laughing.

>ERIKONE: I figured we'd be back to normal size at this point LOL

She led them back to the turn-in location and completed the quest.

>DOCTOR ZAPPIX: Thank you so much for obtaining these. Let's take a look, shall we?

>DOCTOR ZAPPIX: Hmmm. It appears that Fixxa is working on something completely unrelated to what Boss wanted.

>DOCTOR ZAPPIX: Anyhows, thank you for the assistance. Let’s re-large you.

>DOCTOR ZAPPIX pressed a few buttons on a remote.

>DOCTOR ZAPPIX: Hmmmm...

>DOCTOR ZAPPIX: I see that you have failed to re-large.

>DOCTOR ZAPPIX: I may need to consult my reference books. Wait! Is that Fixxa? Right over there!?

Erika turned her character to look in the direction Doctor Zappix was pointing, but then they turned back around, he was gone.

>ERIKONE: Quest shows complete...

>ERIKONE: And there's not another quest in the log. Did he run away? Are we just... small? Might be a glitch. Let me log real fast.

>ERIKONE the PALADIN-100 Has Departed from the Realm.

>ERIKONE the PALADIN-100 Has Rejoined the Realm.

>ERIKONE: We're still small. So...

>DOTTTT Shrugged.

>DOTTTT: I was going to say "At least we're a little further along than Fred is, maybe."

>DOTTTT: So...

>DOTTTT: I guess we'll keep looking. Since I don't think we can do anything else until this gets fixed.

>ERIKONE: Yeah, this kinda sucks. Let's keep looking, I guess.

In the real world, she frowned and took another sip of coffee. This was turning out to be more frustrating that she imagined. At this point, she didn't care about getting world first, she just wanted to finish the quest and get back to normal size (and get Fred out of Shadow PvP before he broke something).

>ERIKONE: Give me a second, I'll check the forums and see if anyone else has reported this.

Erika checked and found that nobody else had reported a similar issue--they had made it further through the quest line than anyone else, but Erika was focused on one thing. She only wanted to finish the quest and beat Fixxa. She didn't care one bit about the rest of the World Firsts in the raid. The lesser guilds could have them.Nobody shrinks the world’s best Paladin and lives to tell the tale.

Erika took another sip of coffee and wiped her glasses. Game on, Goblin Lady.